The second of the Ten Commandments forbids us to worship any graven (carved) image: “You shall not make for yourself any graven image…You shall not bow down to them, nor worship them”.

Making and worshipping images

You will remember that the Egyptians worshipped all kinds of gods.  One of these was the Bull-god, whom they called Apis.  After the Israelites had escaped from Egypt, they went to Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.  While he was up the mountain by himself, the people held a festival in honour of the God who had rescued them from the Egyptians.  And because they saw how strong God was to be able to do this, they made a wooden bull covered all over with gold to represent God.  When Moses came down from the mountain and saw what was happening, he was very angry and destroyed it completely.  So you can see how necessary this Second Commandment was.

You will notice that the Second Commandment refers to the making of images and the worship of images.  There are examples in the Old Testament of images being made but not worshipped.  For example, you’ll remember that on top of the Ark of the Covenant, in which the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments were actually kept, there were two golden angels (Exodus 25:18-20).

Today, in England, if people do not worship God, then they worship money or pleasure or celebrities by treating these as the most important things there are.

Worshipping God alone

Some people think that, because we have statues of Our Lady and of the Saints in church, it means we worship either the statues or the Saints they represent.  This is nonsense.  Worship is that supreme honour which is due to God and God alone.  None of us is so stupid and ignorant as to honour an image as if it were God himself, nor would we be so foolish and wrong as to worship Our Lady and the Saints as if they were God.

Honouring Our Lady and the Saints

What we do is to honour Our Lady as the highest of all human beings, because that is how God himself honoured her when he chose her from all other human beings to be the Mother of his Son.  We must also never forget that Jesus himself also honours her above all other people because she is his Mother.  We should, therefore, be wrong if we did not imitate him in this by doing what he does.

So, too, with the Apostles and the other Saints.  We know that God honours them because Jesus has told us so: “Whoever serves me”, he said “the Father will honour” (NRSV, John 12:26).  And no one has served him better than the Saints have.  So when we honour Our Lady and the Saints or ask them to pray for us, we do not worship them.  We merely honour them and treat them as God wishes us to treat them.

So too with statues of Our Lady and of the Saints.  We shall see this more clearly if we think first of how we treat a crucifix or other figure of Our Lord.  Although it is only made of plaster, it is something more than plaster, just as a Bible is more than paper and print.  And just as we treat a Bible with reverence because it contains the Word of God, so we treat a crucifix with reverence because it represents Jesus who died for our salvation.  Moreover, a crucifix, by showing us what Jesus has done for us, can make us love him more.

Veneration of the Cross

In a number of churches on Good Friday there is held a ceremony called the Veneration of the Cross.  A crucifix is brought in procession into the sanctuary and there the priest standing before the altar and facing the people, says or sings, “Behold the wood of the Cross on which was hung the Saviour of the world”.  The clergy and people kneel before the Cross and kiss the feet of the figure of our crucified Saviour as a sign of love and gratitude for all he did for us on that first Good Friday.

When we do this we are not adoring or worshipping the image on the crucifix.  Rather, we are expressing in a very practical way our adoration of Jesus: “We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee, because by thy Holy Cross, thou hast redeemed the world”.  This ceremony began in the fourth century in Jerusalem itself where an actual relic of the True Cross was venerated in this way each Good Friday, and from there the custom spread all over the world.

Thus the crucifix leads our minds and hearts to Jesus himself. 

Showing reverence

So it is with a statue or picture of a Saint.  We treat it with reverence because of the Saint it represents, and in so doing we do honour to that Saint.  And when we pray before a statue, we do not pray to the figure itself but to the Saint, and we use the figure to help us do that.

In some churches you will see a stand for candles, or a pricket as it is called, in front of a statue.  When we say our prayers there, we buy and light a candle and put it to burn on the stand.  This is partly in honour of the Saint, and partly because the lighted candle is a witness to our prayer after we have gone on our way.

SUMMARY

1. The Second Commandment forbids us to worship images or pictures or, indeed, anything except God alone; that is to say, we must not give to anything or anyone else that supreme honour which is due to God and God alone.

2. So when we ask Our Lady and the Saints to pray for us, we do not worship them, but God wishes us to love and honour them because he loves and honours them.

3. We should also treat a crucifix or other figure of Our Lord with great reverence, for in that way we show our reverence to him whom it represents.  On the same principle we should treat with reverence statues and pictures of Our Lady and the Saints.